This is an ongoing story that I will barely scratch the surface of but Bill Henson an artist/photographer living in Australia has over the last few days/week been having his work of 25+ years seized, closed down and put into legal doubt.

His work is largely inky black desaturated figurative photos of individuals in minimal or distant urban environments wearing either loose clothing or nude. The catch is that there are also nude teen age models included.

Wikipedia sums up the events of the last few days quite well:

Controversies

On the 22 May 2008, the opening night of Bill Henson’s 2007-2008 exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, depicting nude children, was canceled after Hetty Johnston, a child protection campaigner, lodged a complaint about the exhibition with the New South Wales police [1][2][3].

It was announced on 23 May 2008 that a number of the images in an exhibition of his work set to go on display at the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Paddington, Sydney had been seized by police local area commander Alan Sicard, with the intention of charging him with “publishing an indecent article[4], under the Crimes Act.” The seized images were also removed from the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website, where the remainder of the series can now be viewed online[5].

On 25 May 2008, The Age published uncensored the image which was used on the print and email invitation, accompanied by an article by John Elder.[6] Superscript text.

Additional Information

Since then additional galleries have either been raided or have taken down exhibitions that were in the works.

To see additional works of his to inform your opinion you can visit his gallery representation Tolarno Galleries or view an index of images online via google

Written by Christopher Hudgens

Christopher Hudgens is the Operations Manager for BaS and works in various other capacities for other organizations in the Chicago Art & Culture scene. Most recently as Business Operations Manager for the Bridge Art Fair and currently an advocate for all things art & technology.

I am an art student currently studying Henson as my case study.
Im a teenager for christs sake and even i at my age can appreciate and greatly admire the beauty that Henson is able to capture through these children.
All those critical need to either take their head out of the sand or nose out of the air and grow the hell up.
He’s an inspiration to all